Trent Telenko Profile picture
Nov 9, 2021 30 tweets 16 min read Read on X
The issues that @fortisanalysis founder, @man_integrated spoke about recently piece on why the USA may never recover from the current supply chain disruptions have a historical analog in WW2 military supply chains.

That will be this thread's subject
1/
Intercontinental logistics is never easy. Even more so when there is a thinking enemy of the other side shooting holes in them.

Yet for all that, the US never got the single most important piece right the clearing cargo through ports & beaches.

See the WW2 D-Day example.
2/ ImageImage
In the Pacific theaters, it was far worse.

The tyranny of distance, no/poor infrastructure, bureaucracy, and inter-service politics were bigger foes than the Japanese.

3/ ImageImageImageImage
It also didn't help that the San Francisco Port of Embarkation was the most dysfunctional of WW2.

In addition to a 100 times increase in size & people, it calved off POE in Los Angeles, Seattle Portland, & Prince Rupert.

4/
nps.gov/articles/000/t… ImageImageImage
Imagine trying to inventory and mark for the proper consignee, & move a mess like this.

Which was actually a good day for the San Francisco POE.

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Per the NPS San Fran POE link:

"The port and its subsidiary, served by three transcontinental railroads, handled more than 350,000 freight car loads, and employed 30,000 military and civilian employees, not counting the longshoremen who loaded and unloaded cars and ships."

6/ ImageImageImage
Per this link:

"In 1939, the SFPE employed 831 military and civilian personnel. They shipped 48,000 tons of cargo that year. By the end of WW2, in 1945, the SFPE employed more than 30,000 people.

7/
hmdb.org/m.asp?m=70000 Image
...They shipped more than 23 million tons of cargo and 1.65 million soldiers on 4,000 freighters & 800 troopships."

Not mentioned in either link is that the War Dept. fired three San Fran POE directors during WW2.
8/ Image
The last firing happened shortly before the end of WW2, because something needed to be done to logistically support the planned Operation Downfall invasions of the Japanese home islands.

It was the illusion of "doing something."

9/ ImageImageImageImage
The "Great Pacific Supply Chain Collapse" going into Downfall was years in the making. And It was well mapped by a War Dept. investigator in Sept-Oct 1944.

See:

Col. Crosby's report on trip to Pacific Ocean Area and Southeast Pacific Area.
cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collec…

10/
Col. Crosby put in the miles and time to investigate everything involved the the Pacific War supply chain. Every major port operation in Adm. Nimitz's & General Macarthur's theater's were investigated & photographed.
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In the time before ISO containers & container ships, good warehousing, rail & port operations for break bulk freighters required nets, pallets, roller conveyors, forklifts, cranes and military stevedores.

Who were disproportionately African-American in the Jim Crow era.
12/ Image
The problem that Crosby found in his travels was the lack of skills/supplies/infrastructure to effectively use pallets, roller conveyors, & forklifts.

Material handling equipment (MHE), then or now, required skilled manpower, spare parts & proper infrastructure to use.
13/ ImageImageImageImage
In his visit to Oro Bay rear in MacArthur's theater, Crosby found that despite having fork lifts, pallets & leadership deeply committed to mechanization to save manpower. It simply wasn't happening.

14/ ImageImageImageImage
The meeting tonnage metrics now beat efficient for the future.

Spoilage or theft of offloaded tonnage was not measured.

It was the "Department of Someone Else's Problem."

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Different bases didn't share overages of pallets forklifts with bases lacking them because there was no effective communications nor incentives to do so.

[The parallels with containers & their carriers in the ports of LA & Long Beach today stand out.]
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Then there was the real elephant in the pacific supply chain room...inter-service rivalry.

It wasn't simply a matter of the US Navy being in charge, not understanding Army needs & short changing them.

And there was a lot of that.

17/ ImageImage
In fact, A whole lot of that. The USN considered all merchant hulls in it's theater it's property.

No matter if they were War Shipping Administration, War Dept. charter or Army Transport Service. When it came to shipping, the USN was:

"All you bases are belong to us"
18/ Image
And it was more than the old saw of "The Navy gets the gravy while the Army get the beans."

Nope, it was the USN decided what was priority shipping for the theater including the building materials for Army infrastructure.

So the Army didn't get cement.

Literally, see:
19/ Image
Adm. Nimitz and his CENTPAC staff did more to stop US Army infrastructure building in the Pacific than all the torpedoes in the Japanese Navy!

And it went to actively sabotaging MacArthur's operations.

USN stole a complete harbor crft comp meant to land supplies at Leyte!
20/ ImageImageImage
A US Army harbor company w/o it's craft are over trained stevedores. Which was what the USN wanted to slow down MacArthur.

I found that bit of sabotage on pare 79 of the following document:

History of Army Port and Service Command.
cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collec…
21/
And made sure to confirm it was sabotage by looking up Eniwetok's tugs & lighterage in the following photo clipped document:

Base facilities summary: advance bases, Central Pacific Area, 30 June, 1945.
cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collec…
22/ Image
And then checking every tug, barge, floating crane and craft against this document:

Navy Seagoing Tugs and Related Craft
researcheratlarge.com/Ships/Misc/194…

23/
Whatever happened to those Transportation Corps watercraft. They were not at Eniwetok in June 1945 despite a huge number of USN lighterage being inoperative.

Nor did they ever make it to Leyte.

24/ Image
While MacArthur's supply issues at Leyte are blamed on Kamikazes & his own disorganization -- the official narrative.

The USN's "Grand Theft Army Watercraft" at Eniwetok played a bigger role in stopping MacArthur's supplies at Leyte than the HMIJS Yamato lead central force

25/ Image
Yet it can be said that Col Crosby's fact finding tour bore fruit for the Pacific Supply Chain in the SWPA.

By Jan 1945 the SWPA shipping regulation system communicated about shipping & port capacity in every base & with the West coast.
cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collec…
26/
Yet for all the effort, the SWPA regulating system didn't fix the problem.

It only managed it.
27/
The heart of the issue was the dysfunction between the USN and the War Department, and especially the service troop impasse in the South Pacific.

The service troop needed for Downfall were Army & belonged to MacArthur, but the USN would not release operational control.
28/
The impasse leading to the "Great Pacific Supply Chain Collapse" during the planned invasion of Japan was broken not by agreement between supply chain stakeholders.

It was broken by the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
29/ Image
Just like it will take outside events to make the on-going the "Great World Supply Chain Collapse" irrelevant.

Pray G-d this supply chain collapse requires something much less drastic.
/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jun 27
The F-35 Big/Expensive/Few Platform & Missile cult is in deep denial of this battlefield reality.

Air superiority below 2,000 feet/600 meters has been lost by crewed aircraft.

F-35's are irrelevant for the Mavic drone threat, save as a budget threat to the C-UAS procurement.
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The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
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The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.

It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.

3/ Image
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This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.

Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!

1/
This means things as the Russians make these FPV's from Chinese commercial drone components in six figure and soon 7 figure (millions!) numbers.

This has huge implications for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

2/ Image
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When China invades Taiwan, the 1st move will be occupying the small islands around Formosa (left) and making them drone, GMLRS & HQ9 SAM bases.

50 km circles around all those small islands cover almost all the invasion beaches (map right) with PLA 50km fiber optic FPV's.

3/ Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jun 24
It isn't just a matter of pre-2023 sniper tactics being obsolete.

Every patrolling tactic taught by the US Army Infantry and Ranger schools are obsolete when you can "just send a drone. "

1/3
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.

Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.

And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮

2/3
"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 23
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

2/2 Image
P.S.

This is the wiki on Gorgon Stare technology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_St…Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 22
The following photo captures from WW2 bomb damage analysis documents are to calibrate people's eyes as to what to expect from the Fordow strike.

The MOP crater is going to be something called a "Camouflet" because the MOP will dig so deep before exploding.

1/6 Image
The problem with this US strike is the rock density in the Fordow area may be too much for the GBU-57/B MOP (See Grok below)

Unless there is really good intelligence showing a weakness in Fordow or...

2/6
grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…
...this MOP strike had several bombs with the same aim point and a timer setting for simultaneous detonation. Good results will be difficult.

WW2 testing showed hard crystallized limestone was a pain for semi-armor piercing bombs dropped from 16,000 feet to penetrate.

3/6 Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 22
Well, it wasn't a TACO moment.

This US strike on the Iranian nuclear program was paddy cake.

The Iranian smart move here is screaming a lot, doing little and waiting for a Democratic US President to build nukes.

1/2 Image
The dumbest of dumb moves by the Iranians would be laying sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

That was what set off Operation Praying Mantis in the late 1980's which sank 1/2 of Iran's navy in a day.

2/3 Image
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If the Iranians choose doing something dumb...

...US has positioned aerial assets in the Mid-East that are sufficient for a modestly large aerial bombardment effort for ~100+ tactical fighters⬇️

3/3
Read 4 tweets

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